Sunday, November 20, 2011

IHSW November, A Lizzie Borden Sprite Pattern, and a Spiffy Piece of Reader Work

Hello! As you can tell by tonight's title, there are a lot of things that I'd like to cover in tonight's blog post. I'm pretty excited about all of it, though, so I'm going to start writing and hopefully get through it before I fall asleep at the keyboard!

Since it came first in the title, I guess that I'll start off tonight by writing about my participation in this month's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, hosted by the lovely Joysze of Random Ramblings! Since I didn't actually do too much, it shouldn't take too long. I did get a lot done on Friday night, since I stayed up watching Torchwood and It's Always Sunny In Philidelphia instead of playing Chrono Cross in order to get to my stitching goal for the night. This may not have been my best plan ever, since I ended up sitting around sleepily staring at the TV more than I ended up cross stitching, but it was more progress than I made Saturday and Sunday. Because of that, the photo I have to show off is a cryptic and crooked WIP image of the start of a sampler that I found in the mysteriously titled Cross Stitch Patterns by Misako Murayama. When the project is finished, I think that it'll be really cute, but for now, the portion that I have stitched just looks sort of weird and confusing. It's not very big, though, so I should have a finished project photo soon!

While I'm on the subject of Misako Murayama's samplers, I did finish a different one of them a couple of weeks ago, from her book Ondori Cross Stitch Patterns 2. It was really fun to make, and even though it looks very cute and pleasant, I feel like there's something just a bit weird about the selection of items she chose to put into the image. I was really pleased with the finished product, though, and am not sure why I didn't write about it sooner! Now is as good a time as any to write about it, though, so here is the cross stitched sampler that I did earlier in the month.

With all of the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend stuff over and done with, it's time to move onto the next section of this post, which includes tonight's new pattern! Though I always love making new sprite patterns to post here, the idea for tonight's came from Tama (the writer of Stitching Daze), who left a comment on last night's post asking after a pattern of Lizzie Borden. It sounded like a really spiffy idea, so tonight when I got online, I did a little research about Lizzie Borden and came up with a pattern that I was really happy with. The blue dress covered in blood stains and the hair tied back in a bun may make her look a bit like a fairy tale princess gone quite wrong, but as far as I'm concerned, that's the best part about it. I'm also pretty pleased with how politely she's holding her axe, though that's a fairly minor detail. If you'd like to find out any real information about Lizzie Borden, I found out a lot from http://lizziebordenwarpsandwefts.com/, but for the sake of this blog, I hope that you enjoy this cartoonish and likely historically inaccurate sprite pattern depiction of her.

Tonight's final order of business is to feature some reader work, which comes to us today from Deviant Art's Emilywip! Rather than using one of this blog's patterns for a traditional craft, she used one of the Ouran Host Club sprite patterns in a really cute Deviant Art icon! Though the subject of the image is clearly the frustrated Mori that pops into frame, a digital depiction of Honey's sprite pattern can be seen standing in the background. Her faux-crayon backdrop is also really nice, adding an extra layer of cuteness to the whole thing. If you'd like to leave a direct comment on Emily's icon, it can be found on Deviant Art at this link. However, it can be seen in all of its (hopefully) animated glory directly following this text block!

With all of that text and all of those images posted, I think that I'm done with this blog for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow with a brand new Pokemon Monday, though, hopefully featuring an Absol, as requested by Chen-Wang Tan Biyu. Until then, I hope all of you sleep well and start your Mondays without too much trouble!

Lol those samplers are so bright and awesome too! And Lizzie is def on the creepy-cute side. I too googled more on her after the last post and Tama's comment and I love how you did the dress and the axe!

so cute! after seeing this post, i realized i needed those books you mentioned too. i had no idea they even existed, but once i saw your little sampler, i knew i was heading to amazon next. :-) thanks!